Katie Zacharia out as White House press secretary after first week on the job

Washington — Katie Zacharia, President Trump’s new White House press secretary, is being removed from the role after her first week on the job, two U.S. officials told CBS News on Friday. 

Some White House staff learned about the change from news coverage. The New York Times first reported that she had been fired. 

One aide said Zacharia spent the week unusually isolated and didn’t function as a press secretary.

“No one thought she was sticking around long enough to even involve her in actual decision-making,” the aide said.

CBS News has reached out to Zacharia for comment but she did not immediately reply. She was seen at the White House as recently as Friday morning. 

Leaving the White House shortly before news of Zacharia’s departure broke, the president signaled that she might not be in the role for long, saying he told her he would “reconsider” taking the job if he were in her shoes.

“They’ve been so nasty to her,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the press. “I said, to her, ‘Honestly if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it. But I would reconsider. You got a beautiful husband and family.’ I met the family yesterday. Beautiful kids. It’s like from a picture postcard. I said, ‘You should reconsider. Because you don’t want to go through this.'”

The abrupt shift came one week to the day since Mr. Trump announced Zacharia as his pick to replace Karoline Leavitt, who stepped aside in August. The White House has not yet indicated who may replace Zacharia. 

Zacharia’s qualifications and background quickly came under scrutiny as questions arose over her resumé. 

CBS News and other outlets reported that Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer over the years. She graduated from Pepperdine Law School but failed the California bar exam in 2011, a fact she acknowledged on Thursday. She told the New York Times that the president of Pepperdine University advised her at one point that she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney.”

Zacharia told conservative commentator Jack Posobiec that she never described herself as an “attorney at law,” and said there’s a “lot of misinformation around the fact that I labeled myself a lawyer.”

“I was very careful how I executed this. I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” Zacharia said.

The about-face on Zacharia’s role was reminiscent of the tenure of Anthony Scaramucci, who survived just 11 days as White House communications director during Mr. Trump’s first term. 

“Records are made to be broken,” Scaramucci said in a post on X. “But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”